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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24091636">Other Futures</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashesandhoney/pseuds/ashesandhoney'>ashesandhoney</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Castlevania (Cartoon)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe, Fix-It of Sorts, Multi, OT3, Other Worlds, Pining, Polyamory, like within the context of the fic the au is something the characters are deeply aware of, no you know what you get my original pining disasters tag, pining disasters</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 03:14:08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>9,357</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24091636</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashesandhoney/pseuds/ashesandhoney</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>It was a curse that promised that they would see the world that might have been. It was meant for Trevor, Alucard and Sypha in the world we know. There was a certain pain in seeing your family whole and happy in a world that had never been on the brink of an apocalypse. </p><p>But this isn't that story. </p><p>This is the story of the people on the other side. The spell swapped them out. One Alucard from this world for one Alucard from that one. This is the story of seeing the broken world and seeing the shards of happiness that some other version of yourself had dug out of the ashes. </p><p>This is a story about waking up the morning after. This is a story about waking up at home and carrying all the weight of the broken world with you.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Alucard | Adrian Tepes | Arikado Genya/Trevor Belmont/Sypha Belnades</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>58</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Content warning for abusive families in this one. I gave Sypha a dickhead for a dad.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <h3>Trevor</h3><p>Trevor lay in bed. Alone. Noticeably alone. For a long time before he dragged himself down to breakfast. His sister was sitting alone at the long table in the dining room. Messy plates were still strewn around. Usually, Trevor would feel guilty for missing breakfast but his thoughts were too scattered for that today. His thoughts were still buried in the day before. His sister was older than he was. A few months shy of thirty years old and still obstinately unmarried. Trevor knew why. Their parents did not.</p><p>"Are you still a lunatic?" Sonia asked when he came into the room.</p><p>"Always," he said taking a piece of fruit off her plate. Did he really want a bit of apple? No. He just wanted to annoy his sister. Everything about the world felt weird and wrong and broken and he just wanted to fight like they were still kids. Something familiar. Something to help him forget about all the utter madness of the day before. The day that couldn't have actually happened.</p><p>Five more days. Five more days of the manor house and his sister and archival work in the damn stupid Hold. Then he'd be back on the road again. Uncle Fredrick thought he had found a nest of vampires in the mountains. So they were stocking up and heading out. Five more days.</p><p>No. Four.</p><p>He'd lost a day to being a lunatic.</p><p>"How crazy was I?" he asked.</p><p>"So you're admitting to it?"</p><p>He raised his eyebrows. For a brief disturbing second, he expected the pull of the scar tissue but it didn't come. His face moved as it always had. He hadn't been maimed in some distant fight. That other Trevor had. That other Trevor who had watched this entire stupid building burn to the fucking ground before the ruins of it were squashed under a goddamn vampire castle. Because that had happened in the nightmare world.</p><p>"It was a weird day."</p><p>"You were happy to see Aunt Gwen. Happy. You hugged the old bat. I thought you had rabies."</p><p>"I don't think rabies makes you hug your relatives."</p><p>She gave him a look and it was like they were kids again.</p><p>"Care to explain it?"</p><p>"Magic."</p><p>"Magic?"</p><p>"Yeah, magic." Trevor took a piece of bread off the pile of food and left the room. He didn't have anywhere to go. He just didn't want to talk to Sonia. If she kept badgering him for answers, he’d either have to tell her the truth or lie. He didn’t lie to his sister. They fought and sniped but they didn’t lie to each other. He didn’t want to talk about it so he didn’t want to talk to her.</p><p>He escaped without having to lie even if she yelled something after him. It had been magic. His very strange day was just collateral damage in someone else's curse. That other Trevor had gotten himself cursed and been sent off to see the life he could have lived. It was a shitty curse. Trevor had gotten a glimpse of the alternate world and he was pretty sure that spending a day in his life was not the worst side of that deal.</p><p>He'd woken up to a woman laughing in his ear and a hand on his stomach and not nearly enough clothing. Which sounded fine and in some other context might have been better than fine but it hadn't worked out that way.</p><p>The burned ruins. The dust-caked corners of the archives. Hell, the fucking bloodstains on the floors inside the Hold. The stories. The explanations. It was a fucking nightmare.</p><p>It was good to be home. God, it was such a relief to be home.</p><p>“Dad’s looking for you!” Sonia called after him.</p><p>He waved a hand to let her know that he’d heard her but didn’t stop. Yesterday, Dad had been dead. Yesterday, Sonia had been dead. He stopped and stood in the middle of the hall. The house was full of people. This building was home. It was the place they all came back to.</p><p>The night that the Church turned on them would have been like this. The hunt teams all back home with spoils and reports to catalogue. The weather warm enough that Aunt Gwen had brought the twins up north. Weapons training in the courtyard and loud meals in the hall. Children. There would have been so many kids. Trevor’s generation was a big one. He was somewhere in the middle of it. From Luke down to Shelly, they would have been anywhere from twenty-three to four the night they’d been murdered.</p><p>By their own people.</p><p>Maybe it would be easier to take if it had been Dracula come back to wipe out Leon Belmont’s line. Monsters or vampires or witches seeking revenge were easier to understand. They had defenses in place for those possibilities. They’d lost people to monster attacks at home before. The salt rings. The sigils. The iron and silver. The Belmonts had always expected to come under attack.</p><p>But not from humans.</p><p>The Church was human.</p><p>The Church had called on them directly. Priests showed up at their door seeking knowledge or fighters who could protect the population. Father had a friendship with a priest down in Targoviste who had taken up monster hunting for a while in his youth. Not everyone in the Church was supportive. Not every priest. Not every parish. There were those who believed the Belmonts called down the demons and made it all worse. Weren’t they always to be found in the ruins of a village where people had been eaten and their limbs left strewn around the town square? There was a small minority that asked those questions but they had never seemed like a threat.</p><p>The Church was full of idiots but it wasn’t an enemy.</p><p>And yet. They were a breath away from living in a world where the Church had burned them to the ground.</p><p>Trevor should have gone to find his father. He would be out on the training field at this time of day. Trevor had overslept after the shit storm that was yesterday. Later. Trevor was already going to get the disappointed scowl and passive-aggressive scolding. No rush on either of those things. He went upstairs instead.</p><p>He didn’t open the big green door. Eleanor was one of the middle cousins, a few years older than Trevor. She was visiting and had brought a husband and a pair of kids with her so the third floor wasn’t quiet. There had been stretches when Sonia and Trevor were little when they’d been the only kids there. There had also been stretches when every room was full of asshole cousins and the children of some friend or other who was visiting. They would have been in there, asleep, the night it happened.</p><p>Fuck. Trevor wandered the halls. He was looking for something. He just didn’t know what it was.</p><p>That was a lie.</p><p>He knew what it was. He wanted a hand on his back and a head resting on his shoulder and no one saying a word as it all finally sank in and started to feel real.</p><p>He didn’t want to want that. Wanting that led to thinking about them and where they were in this world. He did not need any more vampires or magicians in his life.</p><p>It had been a nightmare world and it wasn’t real.</p><p>The house around him, whole and solid and full of people he sometimes hated but always love was real. The training yard where Julian and Colin were bashing each other with blunted training swords was real. His father’s expression as he showed up late, still chewing on the bread he’d taken from Sonia was real. The forest at the edge of the grounds where he’d played as a child was real.</p><p>This was real. This was the life he wanted.</p>
<h3>Sypha</h3><p>Sypha sat with her feet hanging off the back of the wagon and a very full glass of water held between her palms. The trick was keeping it in the glass as they rattled over potholes and rutted crossroads. She kept her attention on the surface of the water. Smoothing out ripples. Correcting for each bump and sway. Lowering and raising the temperature to control the flow. It was a puzzle. It kept her thoughts in one place so they didn't go skittering off to the day before.</p><p>Impossible fantasies were best left to impossibilities.</p><p>They hit a bump and she had to freeze the entire cup to keep the water from sloshing down her shirt. Damn it. She’d lost her concentration. She thawed it slowly and put her attention back where it belonged. Magic and water. The road rolling away below the wagon. The steady hoofbeats of the horse in the wagon behind.  The way the water settled into the cup. The way it flowed. The exact pitch of the magic it took to control it.</p><p>Her focus was ruined again by a hand snatching the cup.</p><p>"Thanks!" Rina said brightly plucking the cup out of her hand and balancing on the sideboard as she drank it. Sypha’s attention was still on the water and the distraction yanked her back into the real world hard.</p><p>Rina was protective. She had been watching Sypha's back since she was a little kid. Sypha hadn't realized she needed someone to cover for her. That probably meant her father was on a walking duty along the edges of the caravan. She didn’t look for him. She looked up and smiled at her baby sister who was balancing on the side rail and holding onto a strut to keep herself from falling. Irina was thirteen now but she would always be the baby of the family. She was Sypha's favourite sibling especially since Pietr had gone and married some girl and headed off with a wagon train headed east.</p><p>"What did you say to dad yesterday?" Rina asked.</p><p>Sypha didn't know.</p><p>She hadn't said it.</p><p>She had been somewhere else. Shoulder to shoulder with a blonde man who talked magic theory and let fangs show when he smiled.</p><p>That other version of her, the one who had been swapped into her body had said something that had made her father angry enough that her jaw still hurt. It had been a long time since she'd fucked up badly enough that he'd hauled off and hit her. If Rina was asking that meant the bruise was coming in and that made Sypha angrier. Not at Rina for noticing or her other self for saying it. Just angry. She had been running possibilities. A mental list of all the things she could say that would make her father furious. She was aching with the urge to try some of them out. What if she told him what she really thought? What she really wanted? What if she refused to accept his iron-clad belief that he knew more about everything than she ever could.</p><p>"You pissed him off before the sun was even up," Rina said.</p><p>"Should I apologize?"</p><p>She didn't want to apologize. She wanted to hop off the back of the wagon as soon as they hit the next town and catch another ride. Any other ride. Belmont was a famous name. She could probably find him. Find him and tease him into having a laughing argument where he shoved her in the shoulder and called her annoying and then kissed the side of her head.</p><p>"Not if you don't mean it," Rina said.</p><p>"You definitely my favourite sister," she said.</p><p>Rina laughed and hugged her. The urge to just walk away faded a little. She couldn't just walk away from Rina. Maybe they could go together. There were other speaker bands. That other Sypha had lived with her grandfather since she was a teenager. She had spent her life traveling in one of the small bands in Wallachia. She hadn't seen Rina grow up but in that world there had never been a tornado. She hadn’t grown up under constant watch in case she endangered them all again.</p><p>Sypha had been threatened with it. With being sent away. She was dangerous. All that magic that she could barely control at thirteen had spilled out into plumes of fire or frozen rivers in August and just that one time: a tornado that she could feel pulling on parts of her too deep to have names.</p><p>The threats had been simple. If she couldn't control it, she would be sent away before she could bring the Church down on them all. Theirs was the largest band of Speakers around the Black Sea. They carried the stories of the fall of Constantinople. When weighing the safety of nearly a hundred people against one teenage girl, the girl didn't tip the scales.</p><p>She'd never wished for it.</p><p>Sypha had never imagined that life in exile - away from the great Speaking Circles and the tumble of siblings and cousins and the summer breezes off the sea - could be a good one. Wallachia was monster territory. Vampires and worse things prowled snowy mountains. It had been a terrifying threat for a teenage girl who thought she knew what she wanted. She had pushed the magic down and believed it was the right choice right up until Trevor was sitting with his foot on her chair waving his hand and telling her as much as he knew of that other life story.</p><p>People had died.</p><p>People had died in that other world. Night hoards and monsters and the armies of Dracula.</p><p>People had died.</p><p>You didn't envy the world where you were sent at thirteen to live with a relative you'd only met twice, who lived in a distant country where you would have to learn an entirely new language before you could even begin your true training as a Speaker. A world without sisters and Circles and lemon trees. One where people had died in a horrifying war with monstrous creatures. You weren't supposed to envy that life.</p><p>She did.</p><p>One day looking at a life where entire cities had been eaten by monsters and she wanted it because that Sypha had the training and the power and the will to do something about it. She wanted it because she was selfish and lonely.</p><p>"You're a million miles away," Rina said.</p><p>"Sorry, kid," she said. "I’m thinking about possibilities. About how life could have been different. When I was your age, Father threatened to send me away.”</p><p>She tapped the side of the cup that Rina was still holding as an explanation. Because of the magic.</p><p>"I'm glad he saw sense," Rina said.</p><p>Sypha smiled and Rina hugged her arm. Sense. It was very sensible. This was the sensible version of her life. The one with a wagon load full of siblings, marriage prospects that all involved lying about how much magic was running through her veins because no one wanted that passed down to their children and grandchildren, speaking circles where everyone told the same stories time and time again because they visited the same places time and time again, and her parents ruling over every decision. It was the sensible version of her life.</p><p>Tattered hellish castles and underground libraries and casual affection and being turned to and listened to as an expert. Jabbing humour and lips so close to her ear as someone whispers rude comments. An arm wrapped around her waist or dropped over her shoulder. Having an entire room to spread out books and projects and ideas. Someone who would sit on a stool in that room and lean over her notes and argue with her about whether or not the ideas would work.</p><p>That was not the sensible version.</p><p>That was the madcap end of the world version.</p><p>She wanted it back so badly she could barely think straight.</p>
<h3>Adrian</h3><p>Adrian got up early and went looking for his mother. She would use the magic mirror and head out to do house calls before most people were up for breakfast. Wandering the castle halls in the hour before dawn was stranger now after everything that he’d seen yesterday. It felt empty. It had been empty in that other world and maybe it was just a memory. He stopped on the fifth floor and hesitated.</p><p>He had more than an hour before his mother would head out. He still had time to catch her.</p><p>He took the detour and found the room where Sypha had kept her things.</p><p>It was an empty space now. A bed. A dressing table. A closet. Just a room. A guest room for a household that never had guests.</p><p>In another version of the castle. It had been barely organized chaos. Sypha's big table had run the length of the wall. She piled the well-lit space by the window with books, most of them open and stacked together so the different projects were in one place. By the fireplace sat a big chair covered in a quilt that he was sure she hadn’t sat down to sew. Her tightly wrapped bowl of plant goo sat on a block of ice beside a stack of papers where she'd written notes and runes that would have taken him days to decipher if he'd had to work backward through all her sources. Complex. Nuanced. Fascinating work. That space had been warm and busy. Green and bright against the black stone of the castle.</p><p>In the dark, the room was sad and empty and lonely.</p><p>He knew none of her things would be there.</p><p>He knew he would be back in his castle, in his world, with his family still alive.</p><p>They’d explained that. Nothing to worry about, don’t freak out, that was the phrasing Trevor had used. His own world was still there waiting for him to come home. He was home. It should have been a relief but the building felt dark and empty and made him question why he kept coming back here when he could go anywhere in the world. He didn't really want to be in his father's cold black temple to death and learning.</p><p>He glanced down the hall and rolled his hands into fists.</p><p>The other room right there. The one he'd woken up in the day before was only a few doors down. He didn't open that one. Looking at this empty space was bad enough, he didn't need to look at the other one.</p><p>He'd been in that other world for only a day. He'd woken up there and finally, despite putting it off, had fallen asleep there. Those hours in between were it. A glimpse. Nothing more. Just a glimpse of that other world.</p><p>This one was his. This one was his world. This was home. These rooms were as they were meant to be. Empty. That other world was the broken one.</p><p>This world was whole.</p><p>But yesterday, this hall had smelled like herbs and now it just smelled of stone and dust.</p><p>He left it.</p><p>"Hello sweetheart," his mother greeted him when he found her in her lab. Big. Glossy. Organized. Her references were all neatly filed, her specimens in labeled jars, her patient reports for her day of visits all piled up in a neat row. The space was warm and welcoming. She preferred it by a fireplace and lanterns rather than electric lights. It had always been Adrian’s favourite place in the castle. Even when he was tiny, he’d liked finding a quiet corner of this room to sit and draw or read or play with a toy.</p><p>This space was alive.</p><p>Adrian smiled and pulled himself up a chair at her table to look over her files for the day. She kissed the top of his head and slid him the third one in the row because "That's the most interesting one," and then went to put on water for tea.</p><p>His mother had died in that other world. This room had been locked. He’d come down and put his hand on the door and left it locked. He was glad he didn’t have any memories of it dark and cold and empty. It was locked up like a shrine. In that other world, she was gone.</p><p>Here, she was making some sort of tea that probably had fifteen different health benefits that she would explain to him in detail if he asked.</p><p>"Can I ask your opinion?" he asked.</p><p>"Are you still worrying about me?"</p><p>"No," he said.</p><p>Yes. Yes. Yes.</p><p>The possibility of that broken world's past becoming this world's future echoed in his head. He’d managed not to wonder too hard about that up until the moment she called attention to it. Yes. Yes, he was worried. Worried that one day he would close up this room, the files still laid out, and notes partially finished on the writing desk, vials of medicine, and partially finished mixtures all exactly where she’d left them.</p><p>One day she would die. That wasn’t something he fretted over. Mortals died. She had made her wishes clear on that. She wanted to live and die and spend her life as a human and he’d made his peace with that. They had years left. Years for her to perfect her work. Years for her to write her books. Years for her to live and laugh and be.</p><p>Dying was the natural conclusion of living.</p><p>Being taken and murdered in the middle of a life in progress was different.</p><p>He wondered at what the other Adrian - the one that Trevor called Alucard and a bastard in a bizarrely affectionate tone - had done while they were switched. Of course, he had come fretting over his mother, worried about her safety. He’d lived the horrors, not just heard about them after they were done. Had he gone to visit Father as well? What had he done with his day in another world without Sypha to drag him back into the present moment and Trevor to keep him steady?</p><p>“Are you feeling alright?”</p><p>“I am not a science experiment. Please do not try and assess my health.”</p><p>“That was a mother’s concern for her child!” she said in mock affront. She threw her hand up to her chest and widened her eyes. So solemn for a moment before she shrugged it off and turned to grab the sugar bowl and slide it across the table to him along with the teacup. “Though if you ever did want to-”</p><p>“I do not want to participate in a study of comparative immune responses or whatever the end of that sentence is,” Adrian told her.</p><p>She laughed and sat down across from him. He ignored her and added too much sugar to the tea. He was old enough now that she didn’t scold him for it but he could feel the weight of all those childhood admonishments that tea was supposed to taste like tea and not candy. He smoothed out the files and lined up the edges and she let him fuss.</p><p>They were alike. He had been raised in his father’s presence - sometimes - but he hadn’t been raised by his father. He hadn’t been raised by aunties and nannies and the lady down the street who would keep an eye out the way that human children were raised. It had just been the two of them in all the ways that mattered. He fussed with the files and she let him because she knew that he would tell her when he was ready to say it out loud.</p><p>The tea was good. It was better with sugar. Warm and familiar. It belonged in this world. Not the other one. Things started to fall into place. As the chaos of the day before settled into neat rows of folders and the tea and the glow of the sunrise outside the window, putting it into words started to be possible.</p><p>"I might have run into a magic spell yesterday," he said.</p><p>"Ah. True magic?" she said in a tone that made him feel like he was fifteen again.</p><p>"All magic is science and all science is magic and the lines will always blur but this one was cast as a magic spell so you'll have to excuse the terminology. We can shelve that argument for another day."</p><p>She smiled and patted his head like he was a kid.</p><p>"I got a look at another world. Whether it was a quirk of time or space or the action of god and demons or a magic spell doesn't matter. I saw it. I lived it for a few hours. I was there."</p><p>Then he was telling the story. He edited it a little. He left out Trevor appearing in the room without pants on and maintaining a casual conversation while he dug around in the closet. He left out the texture of Sypha's hair and talk of blood. He left out what his father had done in the wake of his wife's death. He edited it but he told the story in its broadest strokes. The story of a broken world and of the luminously bright spot of those two people leaned together in the kitchen in Dracula's castle, eating fresh bread and laughing at each other.</p><p>He didn't say it. The strangeness of that relationship and how it all fit together was too hard to put into word. Something in his mother's expression said that Lisa was putting together enough pieces to understand the emotion in those holes if not the details.</p><p>"Are you giving or seeking advice?" she asked.</p><p>"I would like you to be careful knowing that there are those in the world that will see a witch in any shadow but I know that offering you advice would be disrespectful. You know what the world is and how the world is and don't need me to tell you that there are risks."</p><p>"I will be careful."</p><p>"Thank you."</p><p>"What advice are you looking for?"</p><p>Adrian took a long slow breath. He let his gaze wander for a moment. The room was so familiar. This specific space, more than the rest of the castle, was his childhood home. It was all so familiar: the smell of tea and paper and the bite of astringent chemicals in the line of pharmacological experiments on the far wall. This was home.</p><p>"Is it wrong to go and visit?"</p><p>"Visit an alternate universe?"</p><p>"Visit the people I met there, in their lives here. She's a Speaker and a very powerful magician. She can't be that hard to find. And I know where his family lives,” he said. Because he is a Belmont and Father has always kept an eye on them, was an explanation better left out. He rubbed the bridge of his nose and said, “I don’t know that I’d be welcome without the context of that other life.”</p><p>“Why not?”</p><p>He flashed her a smile and made sure the fangs were noticeable. He usually didn’t play that card with his mother. He would bring it up in arguments with his father but it bothered his mother. She worried about it. She cared that he felt separate from both worlds. One foot in each and no true place in either.</p><p>“You are not a monster. If they’re not idiots, they’ll figure it out.”</p><p> He smiled. “I didn’t use that word. It feels like an imposition like I should leave that other world to that other world and let this one unfold as it was intended to.”</p><p>“What do you want?”</p><p>He frowned. An immediate answer came to mind but it was not something he was going to say to his mother.</p><p>“What do you hope to gain from going to say hello? Why do you care about these people?”</p><p>He thought about that.</p><p>Paused and let the ideas turn in his mind.</p><p>She was late. He’d been talking for a long time and her folders lay between them in neat lines, a reminder that she was supposed to be off taking care of patients in some backwater town where people died of cut fingers or stepping on a nail. She was late but she didn’t rush him. Didn’t put it off. She sat there with her empty teacup in her hands and waited for him to answer.</p><p>“I don’t fit,” he said.</p><p>“Fit?”</p><p>“In your world. In his. I don’t fit. I don’t want to befriend the vampires who wander through these halls. I don’t care for death and destruction the way that they do. I cannot walk through the markets and the streets of quiet towns and pass unnoticed. I am not human enough for the humans nor vampire enough for the vampires. I don’t fit.”</p><p>She started to say something and he raised a hand and waved it off.</p><p>“I don’t blame anyone for that. Don’t apologize to me and don’t try and tell me that I’m wrong. The average person is afraid of me. The average vampire wants me to be things that I am not. I have known for a long time that finding a place where I fit would be a difficult journey. I never doubted that I would find it but I’ve always known that it wouldn’t be easy.”</p><p>He paused and drank the last cold bit of tea before he said the rest. “And I woke up yesterday and it was there. I came down for breakfast and sat at a table where I was neither too human or too vampiric. I was just me. Maybe this world is too different. Maybe it isn’t something that can be found again without the ashes and blood and the horrors of that other world. I want to know. I’ve never been just me with anyone outside this family. I’ve always been Dracula’s son. I’ve always been a pretty monster. I want the chance to find that feeling again.”</p><p>His mother nodded.</p><p>He should probably stop talking but the words were coming now.</p><p>“The possibility of finding a home somewhere other than the page of a book is more than I usually allow myself to daydream about. This wasn’t a daydream. This was real. Trevor was annoying. He made terrible jokes and elbowed me in the ribs when I didn’t laugh at them. Sypha was judgmental to the point of being mean. They weren’t some fantasy I dreamed up. They were real people. Messy and damaged and happy.”</p><p>They'd been happy.</p><p>Despite everything, they'd been happy.</p><p>Very together and very happy because of it.</p><p>If he kept saying things, something he didn’t want his mother to hear was going to slip out. So he stopped.</p><p>“Go visit,” she said.</p><p>He didn’t say anything back right away. He wasn’t quite ready to trust his mouth. He was going to open it and something was going to fall out about liking the way Trevor smelled or how close he’d come to kissing Sypha while she had green herbal magic goop dripping down her wrists. He would say something about wanting that particular sort of happy so much it ached.</p><p>“Happy is easy to imagine and difficult to find. People find the roses and get distracted by the thorns. Go looking for flowers. What’s the worst that could happen?”</p><p>“I could get murdered and reignite a centuries-old feud that Father has admirably put behind him.”</p><p>“Hm," she said without inflection. He looked up to find her staring at him. He shrugged it off. Laughing and pretending that he didn't mean it.</p><p>Adrian laughed. “More likely I get my heart broken but as my mother once told me, hearts are just muscles. They heal.”</p><p>His mother studied him. She narrowed her eyes. He kept smiling.</p><p>He was pretty sure Belmont wouldn’t kill him on sight.</p><p>“Do not get yourself murdered.”</p><p>“It’s not on my to-do list,” he said. “You, on the other hand, are neglecting your to-do list. This man with the abscess on his foot needs a doctor.”</p><p>He pushed a file towards her. He hadn’t read it. He had no idea what was in it. It sounded like the sort of thing she’d be called on to treat in some village somewhere. She frowned at him but flipped it open and read it. She twisted her lips into a little scowl. Not a foot malady then.</p><p>“This is an expectant mother experiencing excessive cramping,” she told him.</p><p>“But wouldn’t it have been impressive if I’d been right?” he said. “She needs a doctor even more than the fictional man with the abscess.”</p><p>Lisa Tepes let her son shoo her out the door and through the mirror and off to help the needy. He was left alone in the castle again. His father might be there somewhere. Dracula came and went on his own schedule. Adrian didn’t really want to talk to him. What was he going to say? Mother has convinced me that I am doing the right thing when I gallivant off in search of the Belmont that helped kill you in some other world? This was not something he was going to discuss with his father.</p><p>He sat in his mother’s lab for a little while, paging through one of her projects on vaccination. Then he put out the lights and went back upstairs he sat down on the edge of the bed in the room that didn’t belong to anyone in this world. In that other one, the three of them would be awake and relieved to be back together.</p><p>He let himself imagine another moment. Homecoming and relief and someone laughing in his ear because they were glad to see him. It was a beautiful thing to imagine, sliding into the quiet spaces and knowing that he belonged there.</p><p>It was the ghost of a future.</p><p>It was worth the attempt.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <h3>Adrian</h3>
<p>Adrian sat at a small table in the corner and swirled a glass of red wine between his fingers. The tavern was a peasant affair playing at something grander. Dark wood bar top and tables. Clean glasses. Some pageantry hanging on the walls. A few monster skulls that might have been real and might have been doctored boar bones. But the illusion slipped around drafty windows, a lack of anything better than this piss poor vintage and a clientele that was mostly farmers. The crowd was made up of those people who considered themselves good and honest and godfearing and all the rest but who were always a step away from finding a pitchfork and joining a mob. </p>
<p>He looked away from the people and swirled his wine again. He wasn't drinking. It was a prop. He took a sip. Maybe he was considering it. Maybe getting drunk would help. At least then he’d have something to blame this idiot idea on. </p>
<p>He was questioning his sanity in a town like this. </p>
<p>The boar skull judged him from the wall over the fireplace. He shouldn’t have set foot on their lands. If he died here, he’d have no one to blame but himself. </p>
<p>Adrian was lost in his thoughts until reality slammed back into place.</p>
<p>His chair jerked as someone kicked it hard enough to spin him half way around. He managed not to spill the drink and set the glass back on the table before standing and leveling his gaze on the man. </p>
<p>“You,” the man said. </p>
<p>Adrian’s fist relaxed and his mouth quirked with the ghost of a smile. </p>
<p>Trevor Belmont was taller than him but not by so much that the boots he was wearing didn’t make up the difference. The boots weren’t the easiest ones he had to run in but he appreciated the height now that he had Trevor glaring at him. The man wore livery, that damned family crest splashed across his chest as a reminder of who he was and what that family was famous for. </p>
<p>"Hello Belmont," Adrian said in the flattest voice he could manage. </p>
<p>“What are you doing here?”</p>
<p>Adrian raised his eyebrows and took another drink of his wine. He held himself still and steady and planned out three escape routes between lifting the glass and then setting it on the table so his hands were free. When this went wrong, it was going to go wrong fast. People were looking now. The casual curiosity of people noticing a stranger was replaced with craned necks and low whispers. Belmont drew in all the attention around them, not just Adrian's. People knew who he was and the cared about what he did. </p>
<p>Trevor looked different. No scar. Better haircut. Well cut clothes worn properly. He was drawn in finer lines than the version Adrian had met but those weren't the details that mattered. What mattered was how he carried himself with the casual arrogance of the landed gentry. The Trevor Belmont that Adrian met had fought for every scrap of praise or respect. </p>
<p>This man expected people to do what he said. Expected people to care what he said. Expected to be treated like a little warrior king. It was scrawled across his downturned mouth, his polished shoes, his imperious gaze.<br/> <br/>The little warrior king wasn't exactly issuing invitations of friendship or camaraderie. </p>
<p>Adrian had known not to expect a warm welcome. He knew that this Belmont hadn't taken his visit to that other world very well. Adrian had held out some fragile outside hope that maybe this would go well. He wanted an echo or a hint of that one stolen day badly enough to come here. </p>
<p>He stood on Belmont land under the shadow of a house full of people who wanted his kind dead on principle and his family dead in particular. He had come because he was infatuated with someone who didn’t exist. This person wasn’t the one he had met. </p>
<p>"What are you doing in my bar?" he snarled.</p>
<p>"Is it yours? I didn’t know you were in the tavern business. It's the closest thing to a decent establishment in this town," Adrian sat back down and stretched out his legs, lounging a little bit. It cut off one of his 3 escape routes but Trevor wasn’t reaching for a weapon. Adrian made a show of being comfortable in an uncomfortable chair. </p>
<p>He was not about to be intimidated by Trevor Belmont. </p>
<p>Trevor stared down at him. </p>
<p>Adrian was a little bit intimidated. </p>
<p>No. </p>
<p>Intimidated wasn't the right word. </p>
<p>He was uncomfortable.</p>
<p>With this stupid plan. With the things he wanted. With how certain it was that he wasn’t going to get them. With this town full of salted window sills and sigils inscribed above every doorway. It was a place that positively crawled with monster hunters. The Belmont Estate sat on the outskirts of town and there were more than a few wannabes scattered around the town. Adrian was uncomfortable with everything from the foundations of this damn pub to the flag flying from the top of the tower on the manor house on the hill. </p>
<p>Trevor Belmont did not help matters when he sat down across from him. Chin up. Blue eyes hard and considering. </p>
<p>But he sat down. </p>
<p>Adrian let his smile slip out again.</p>
<p>"Sypha warned me about your attitude," he said. </p>
<p>"Fuck," Trevor muttered and cast a glance over his shoulder. "Is she rattling around here, too?"</p>
<p>"No," Adrian said studying Trevor's expression. He wasn't easy to read. Was that expression relief or disappointment? Was that tone sarcastic or curious? Adrian shrugged. "She's farther south. Her family travels well into the Ottoman Empire. I found her grandfather but he hasn’t seen her in years." </p>
<p>Trevor nodded and it was as unreadable as the muttered swearword had been. He looked over Adrian's shoulder. His attention had stayed locked on Adrian and losing it to the sound of the door was annoying. Adrian wasn't sure if he was being watched as a potential threat or something else. The door to the pub had opened but it didn't bring any surprising scents with it. Just more human bodies wearing leather and cotton. </p>
<p>"You should leave," Trevor said. </p>
<p>"I know." </p>
<p>Everything about the town screamed at him to he should leave. </p>
<p>This was not a place for vampires. This wasn't a place for anyone but monster hunters and Belmonts. He didn't stand up. </p>
<p>"I mean it. That wasn't me being an asshole. You're not subtle," he said. </p>
<p>"I could be." </p>
<p>"I can see your fucking teeth and human eyes don't come in that particular shade of shiny. You are not subtle. A pair of my cousins just came in and they're going to recognize what you are the minute they notice you,” he said. Adrian twisted to scan the new arrivals. There it was. That same stupid crest. Same shiny boots. </p>
<p>"Be careful, Belmont, I might think you care." </p>
<p>"I'm very sure they're dumb enough to try and kill you. I am equally sure that you could kill everyone in this building before either of them got a sword out. Just go." </p>
<p>Adrian nodded but he was smiling a little at the assessment. "I'm not here to kill anyone." </p>
<p>"Please leave," he didn't say it like he was pleading. It said it like it was somewhere between an order and a joke. </p>
<p>Adrian smiled. Really smiled. Maybe he could learn to like little warrior king Belmont.</p>
<p>"Have they noticed me?"</p>
<p>"Not. Yet," it was hissed out like a threat. It was a threat. </p>
<p>"Until next time," Adrian said with a little bow of his head. </p>
<p>Then he disappeared. He stood and willed himself somewhere else. Further from the bright light, nearer the doors. He couldn't go far but it was far enough that Trevor was casting around with the tiniest frown on his face. Adrian stopped and watched as the cousins finally noticed him and dragged him away from the small corner table to a bigger one. They were on display. Petty Warrior Kings drinking beer and laughing and putting on a show for the peasants. </p>
<p>This Trevor smiled more easily and without the knives in his gaze. He caught sight of Adrian still watching and their eyes met for a moment. Trevor blinked and his smile shifted and it wasn't quite the soft look Adrian remembered. Not quite. But it was close. Close enough to leave him staring and trapped like an animal in a snare. </p>
<p>Adrian lost all his nerve - all at once - and stepped out of sight again. He stopped in a pocket of shadows on the corner and looked up at the manor house. Half this town would try and kill him if they noticed him and the other half would stand on the sidelines and cheer. </p>
<h3>Trevor</h3>
<p>"Penny for your thoughts?"</p>
<p>"They're not worth it,” Trevor said without looking up from his drink. </p>
<p>Every thought he had was about the day that could not exist. He had spent most of the last few weeks trying to convince himself that that entire strange day hadn’t been real. He’d rationalized it away. A dream. A flicker or an echo of some spell. It was something but it wasn’t real. It didn’t fit in this life. Sonia telling him that he had been weird that day was one thing. Having the blonde toothy vampire show up and study him was something else. </p>
<p>"Thinking about wedding bells?" his cousin asked. </p>
<p>"No,” Trevor said. </p>
<p>He wasn’t paying attention to which one of the twins it was. They didn’t pay attention to much of anything. They hadn’t noticed the vampire sitting in the middle of their favourite pub in the town in the middle of their ancestral lands. They hadn’t noticed but Trevor had done more than not notice. Trevor had let him leave, had warned him, had sent him out into the night to eat his people on his land. </p>
<p>He wouldn’t. </p>
<p>That thought came unbidden and unsubstantiated. He had no proof of that. His other self had curled up with that creature and made a home in his house but trauma did things to people. That much death. That much loss. That other Trevor’s decisions were not something anyone should be basing their choices on. But he had. He had sent the vampire away healthy and whole because his other self trusted the bastard. </p>
<p>"Murano nearly kicked me out when dad tried to set us up. He wouldn't even let me meet her. I don’t know why any of them think you’re going to have more luck. She's probably a nightmare just like her daddy.” </p>
<p>They were still talking about the daughters of Italian landowners and the possibility of marrying them. Trevor looked up at the table. The glass of wine was still there. A little talisman. A little reminder that he really had been there. </p>
<p>"You're a troll. I wouldn't let you near my daughter either,” Trevor muttered. </p>
<p>"So you are thinking about her?" </p>
<p>"No."</p>
<p>At least that wasn't a lie. He was thinking about gold eyes and the impossible day. That other life. The scars that hadn’t healed properly because there had been no Uncle Frederick with a box full of medicines and potions and suture kits. No manor house to retreat to. No Sonia to push him to train harder because he was not going to let her beat him in another foot race. No Father barking orders and making plans. No Aunt Gwen judging. No Beatrice down in the kitchens slipping sweet breads to the children and winking. No cousins. No aunts and uncles. No one left but him. </p>
<p>He looked across the table. Tried to imagine it. Tried to imagine these idiots dying before they'd been old enough to shave properly. Tried to imagine seeing the ruins of the house when it was still smoldering. Tried to imagine the life that had led him him from that hellish moment to waking up with a vampire draped across his chest. </p>
<p>The worst part was that it had been warm and comfortable and he'd been happy about it for the first few disoriented moments. He understood why that other self had let himself get pulled into the two of them. It wasn’t just loneliness and trauma. Adrian’s smile. Sypha’s laugh. The easy trust of people who knew each other so well that they could speak volumes in a single glance. </p>
<p>"Trevor, hey, the fuck are you thinking about? Enough brooding bullshit." </p>
<p>"Is she hot?" </p>
<p>He rolled his head on his shoulders and cast around for the bastard vampire. This gold eyed vampire had been there too. It had been real for him. </p>
<p>"Really hot?" </p>
<p>"Yeah," he said. </p>
<p>Wrong fucking answer, Belmont. Now they were actually curious. Trevor was smarter than to admit to him but he let himself admit to her. Her big blue eyes and easy smile. Her messy hair pushed back from her face with both hands. The bare feet tucked up under her as she looked up from her chair. The magic. God the magic. The way fire danced over her fingers and she flung little ice pellets at the side of his head when he annoyed her. </p>
<p>"She sounds like a disaster." </p>
<p>"Let me guess, all you want from a woman is perfect hair." </p>
<p>"All I want from a woman is a blowjob. A wife should at least look presentable in public." </p>
<p>"Maybe I don't want a wife." </p>
<p>That had always been true. </p>
<p>He had always carried this tiny fear that having a family meant having someone they could use against him. Someone they could target. Uncle Frederick had had a wife once. Someone who was long dead because a monster had followed him home from a hunt and killed her. Trevor had never met her but the story had gotten lodged somewhere deep in his mind when he was young. It would swim to the surface whenever he was introduced to someone he father thought he should marry. </p>
<p>The idea of that girl - usually some local noble's daughter they wanted better trade deals with - coming up against the last monster Trevor had come to face to face with. The last thing he'd killed was a cave dwelling frog faced thing. Too dumb to think of retracing his steps but the idea had been there when their fathers’ had made the introductions. The mental image of it crawling into Adeline Murano's sitting room was a horrifying one of blood and dismemberment. </p>
<p>The mental image of it crawling toward Sypha was almost hilarious. She would probably barely look up from her project to set it on fire. The greater issue would be her just stepping over the corpse on her way to work on some other idea and leaving it there because she was too busy to dispose of it properly. </p>
<p>Imagining the possibilities of that morning with it's warm bodies and wandering hands was impossible. He couldn’t look directly at it even when he was alone in the dark in the middle of the night. He couldn’t hink on that. </p>
<p>But. </p>
<p>Imagining going into a fight with people that powerful at his back was something else. Sypha was fast and adaptable and breathed magic. Adrian was calculating and impossibly powerful. The problem with imagining the two of them in a fight was that it made him want to imagine the other thing. Then his head started hurting all over again. He was not letting that possibility in. </p>
<p>Especially not with Adrian in town and the jackass twins sitting across from him. The jackass twins were debating the relative merits of not marrying so you could fuck around and fucking around despite being married and Trevor got up and walked away from the table. </p>
<p>He didn't stop until he was outside. </p>
<p>Maybe being drunk would be better but he did not want to go back into that building. The two possibilities bounced around in his head for a minute. Wanting to get the hell away from that bar won out. </p>
<p>The night was crisp but not cold and the smell of woodsmoke and farmland and the forest was so familiar it felt like it was in his bones. He didn’t want anything else. </p>
<p>Adrian fell into step with him halfway up the hill. </p>
<p>"I thought I told you to leave," Trevor said. </p>
<p>"You were quite particular about pointing out that it was because your shitty relatives were showing up and not because you actually wanted me gone." </p>
<p>"I actually want you gone,” Trevor said. </p>
<p>He didn’t want anything else. He wanted his family and these lands and to know that he had saved lives by killing monsters. He didn’t want anything else. Even if he didn’t really want to look his family in the eye today. </p>
<p>They walked in silence. </p>
<p>Trevor didn’t do anything. Didn’t try and chase him off. Didn’t start a fight. Didn’t make a threat. Didn’t make an invitation. He just kept pace. </p>
<p>They just walked in step through the dark streets of the town. The vampire’s hair fell around his face. Trevor glanced at him and all he could see was that golden blond that shone faintly in the light streaming out of a nearby window. He looked away again. </p>
<p>"Your time there was terrible?" Adrian asked.</p>
<p>He had been there. He had gone too. It had been a real place. A real possibility. A real world. Different but real. </p>
<p>Fuck. </p>
<p>"Fuck. No. Yes," he sighed. "They were living on top of the ashes of everything I am and could ever be. It wasn't a fun visit." </p>
<p>A nod. </p>
<p>"Did you have a nice day with the people who murdered your father?"</p>
<p>Trevor was needling. Trying to get a reaction. The vampire - calling him that was easier than naming him - paused and gave an elegant shrug. </p>
<p>"I murdered my father," he said. "They just helped." </p>
<p>"You're just fine with that." </p>
<p>"He tried to raze the country and kill everyone. If he did it in this world, I'd do what my other self did. Sometimes the right thing to do isn't the easy one." </p>
<p>Trevor huffed out a breath. </p>
<p>"Why are you here?” Trevor asked.</p>
<p>"I just wanted to know if it was real. I just wanted that proof. Don’t worry. I'm not going to stay where I'm not wanted."</p>
<p>“I just want the proof to go away. Fuck that entire universe. The ashes of children. The death toll of what your father did,” Trevor said. </p>
<p>Adrian - the vampire - set his lips in a tight line but he kept his attention very far away, staring at a point on the horizon. He shook his head and his hair fell back in front of his face again. Trevor watched him. They were still walking through the quiet streets. There were windows lit up by candle light and the smaller tavern at the end of the road was boisterous as they got closer. Neither of them broke away. Trevor kept planning his exit and then instead of turning down that road, he stayed in step. Waited for the comment that went with that silence. There was something he wanted to say and Trevor’s curiosity was too strong to walk away without hearing it.   </p>
<p>"Would you kill me?" the vampire asked. </p>
<p>Trevor stopped and looked at him. They stared each other down. It was tense but not hostile even with the question hanging in the air between them. </p>
<p>"If you did something to deserve it." </p>
<p>"Like?”</p>
<p>Trevor frowned. </p>
<p>"What counts as deserving it in your worldview? I drink blood, I toy with unholy magics, where's the line for the Belmonts?"</p>
<p>“That’s enough. Drinking blood. Raising demons.”  </p>
<p>"What about you?” </p>
<p>“What?”</p>
<p>“I’m not dead. You haven’t even reached for a weapon.” </p>
<p>“I am a Belmont.” </p>
<p>Trevor crossed his arms and looked up the hill. He could see the faint light from the windows. People were still awake up there. He didn’t want anything else. He was one of them. He was never anything but a Belmont. He’d never asked for more than this world and this life and this calling. </p>
<p>“I am aware but I’m not asking for the family manifesto. I’m asking for yours.” </p>
<p>Yours. Trevor looked at him. The way he said that one word made Trevor uncomfortable. Made it hard to hold his ground and stay where he was standing. He did it out of spite. Kept his gaze level and his hands still because he did not want to admit to the skin crawling feeling that went along with that tone. </p>
<p>"Suffering," he said. “That’s my line. That’s the difference. That’s when you deserve to burn.” </p>
<p>Adrian nodded but didn't say anything.</p>
<p>Trevor's mouth kept moving. "There are things in this world that destroy children and ruin lives. Some of them are human. Some are not. There are people in that house up there for whom not human is enough of a reason. Don't walk these streets and take that lightly." </p>
<p>Another nod. </p>
<p>"Your world view is fragile." </p>
<p>Trevor whirled on him. Every inch of the conversation crystallized into anger. "Fuck off." </p>
<p>"That's why you hated it so much," he said. "Because that other version of you makes his decisions based on his personal morality - a morality that is idiosyncratic and driven by gut feeling - rather than by the expectations of his family." </p>
<p>Trevor spun on him and shoved him hard in the chest. He slid back a step and settled into a fighting stance but kept his hands down. He didn't hit back. He just watched. Wary but unafraid. </p>
<p>"I hated it because everyone I know is dead at the hands of our allies for charges that were built on lies." </p>
<p>"What happened there, needn't happen here." </p>
<p>Trevor sighed and looked up at the house. He didn’t want anything else. He had made his decisions. He knew what he wanted. All at once the rage vanished. </p>
<p>Fuck this. Fuck him. Fuck that. </p>
<p>He turned around and walked away from Adrian Tepes. He didn't look back at the half vampire monstrosity and headed back up the hill. </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Do I know where I am going with this fic?<br/>No. </p>
<p>Did I really want to write some mild angst? <br/>Oh yes.</p>
        </blockquote><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This MAY end up being multi-chapter. I have ideas. I've got some things started. I am leaving it as a one shot until I've gotten my shit together enough to write whatever extra scenes I decide to include in this.</p><p>I am working on another Castlevania fic but this idea bit me and wouldn't let go until the words were down so here they are. </p><p>I worried about this one being too similar to other fics in the fandom but you know what, two cakes bitches, enjoy your second cake or don't but I enjoyed writing this... fic... cake.... metaphors are hard .... cake even if other people have written very similar ideas before.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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